


Hell's Last Issue

by tenpointstohufflepuff (MsBinns)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2018-12-12 01:09:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11726370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsBinns/pseuds/tenpointstohufflepuff
Summary: The same characters we know and love imagined in WWII Europe. Leo Fitz is an accomplished lab technician turned private in the Territorial Army. Jemma Simmons is the bright and ambitious daughter of a shopkeeper who wants to serve the war effort however she can. Both are meant for something bigger when they meet in London in June 1940.





	1. Chapter 1

“I expect you’ll be wanting to join the Territorial Unit.”

The words had been innocent enough. It wasn’t a command or an order exactly. But when Lieutenant Colonel Alistair Fitz of the Black Watch made a suggestion to his son like that there was only one correct answer. That was how it had been with his father since Fitz had been a boy. Even in letters from as far off as Egypt and India he could detect it. _I expect you’ll be wanting to join the club team. I expect you’ll make top marks. I expect you’ll be going to Edinborough._ The tone was always implicit. Expectation and appearance were everything to his father.

The truth was Fitz hadn’t wanted to join a Territorial Unit. He hadn’t wanted to join the Army at all.

But war was brewing. His father had prophesied the conflict and the failure of peace long before the official declaration came. Sometimes Fitz thought, despite the horrors he had seen as a Captain in the Great War, his father desperately wanted another war. At the very least Fitz knew he wanted his son to have one. Only a war can make a man, his father insisted.

He had urged his son to join the King’s Army after he finished at university. He wanted him to attend the Royal Military Academy, earn his commission and, if he still insisted on being a man of science, join the Royal Engineers. The Army was where he could make a name for himself, he said. Wasting his time in a laboratory would do little to advance his station. But Fitz didn’t want to be a Sapper and he certainly didn’t want to be a leader of them.

Yet here he was, a member of the 1st Line Territorial Army. A private who had graduated with first class honors in a platoon of lads from Glasgow. 

Joining with The Territorials had been an easy decision, in the end. It certainly seemed better than enlisting with the Regulars. At least with the Highlanders he could keep his job in the laboratory and spare his mum the heartbreak for a little while longer. 

The Government would want your brain not your body, his poor mum had insisted when he’d first told her he was joining up. The remark had earned a derisive snort from his father about what a poor excuse of a body it even was. At least be an officer, she had pleaded then, once war was imminent, wanting him to delay his entry into the service and stay safe as long as possible. She tried arguing that his intellect would be better served as a strategic planner behind the scenes; a remark that had earned another bitter laugh from his father about how Fitz wasn’t fit to plan a tea party. 

It had been a terribly uncomfortable dinner. His father’s brief trips back to Glasgow always were. He can still remember almost every exchange. Both his mum’s teary pleas not to join and his father’s derision. The words from both parents are all he can hear on the troop train from their training camp at Carrick to Aldershot. 

The Highlanders time training at the huge garrison in Carrick had been an eye-opening experience. Training weekends in Glasgow, even in the spring of 1939, had involved little training. It was more of a social club really, complete with billiards and reading rooms. He was a Saturday night soldier, a lab technician who knew how to march and that was about it. It hadn’t involved much actual military knowledge and little sacrifice to his normal routine. That all changed when they mobilized and moved to Carrick Airfield.

In Carrick he’d been issued an Enfield Rifle and a gas mask. They’d gone to the range and fired actual bullets. They fixed bayonets and plunged them into dummies dressed like German soldiers. There had even been talk about visiting a slaughterhouse to practice sticking the bayonets into actual carcasses to get used to the resistance they'd feel when plunging them into a human body

Fitz had blanched at the mere thought. He tried to keep his abhorrence of violence and general squeamishness around blood a secret from his squaddies. He kept much of his life hidden from the people that were supposed to be his new family. His job in a research lab, his degree, his father’s position as a senior officer. All anybody knew about Fitz was he liked to read and he lived with his mum. He had no sweetheart and didn’t talk about his mates back home.

He talks now though on the train to Aldershot. They’re on their way to it, headed down south to a base even bigger than Carrick. He natters on about the flora and fauna in France, the conditions for a channel crossing, how large a wave it would take to capsize a troop ship. It’s more than anybody can remember him ever talking in over six months.

“Nervous, Fitz?” one of his squaddies laughs derisively, in a way that reminds him too much of his father. “Want to go back home to mum?”

“Piss off,” he growls. “If you’re not scared, you’re a liar.” There is no question about where they’re headed. He knows anyone who says they’re not afraid of seeing combat is full of it.

“Aye, Fitz is right,” his sergeant defends. “We’re going into combat. It’s the great unknown.

Combat. The word had been on their lips for months. It had been a vague idea. Something they could train for and imagine, but never really experience until they were there. Now it was becoming reality. 

They muse about what it will be like, what they will do, how they’ll react. All Fitz can think about are his father’s last words at the station. _I’ll see you on the other side,_ he’d stated simply and that had been that. Fitz tries to turn over what the words even mean. There had been a fateful lingering tone. Almost like his father didn’t expect him to come back at all. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s the last weekend pass he knows they’ll have before they go across the Channel. One of his squaddies fatefully adds that it will be their last weekend pass ever and they all give a nervous laugh. Each news report issued from France casts more of a pallor on their time in Aldershot. The British Expeditionary Force is in an all out retreat. Staying in garrison, under lock and key, musing about where in France they’ll be sent, and just how unstoppable the German war machine is has everybody on edge. It’s why they need the pass.

He reckons they’re a conspicuous group, a bunch of Scottish blokes tramping around the streets of London in uniform. He doesn’t mean to lose them. He hopes, at least, they hadn’t intended to lose him either. He knows he should be enjoying what may be his last night of revelry, but his legs just don’t take him to the dance halls or pubs. They take him to the only thing in London worth seeing. The place where Faraday had discovered the basis for electromagnetism. Where Dewar had pioneered his work in molecular spectroscopy and Davy had all but invented electrochemistry. The foremost center of scientific research and exploration

He doesn’t know how long he is standing outside the stately Corinthian columns of the Royal Institution before she arrives. 

“Do you think they’d let me in if I knocked?” A lilting feminine voice sounds from beside him. He turns to see a young woman cupping her face against the glass and attempting to peer inside through the window. He doesn’t know whether it’s because he’s been surrounded by blokes for six months, but he can’t take his eyes off her. She isn’t dressed in anything unusual, a blue polka-dot dress with a belted waist, with dark hair that falls gently around her face in soft curls. “Are you wanting to go inside too or are you just admiring the architecture?” He knows he’s staring, but can’t stop. He wills himself to say something, but finds himself mute and still unable to stop gazing at her. “Been awhile since you’ve seen a woman?” she teases knowingly.

“Ye-yeah,” he finally replies sheepishly and forces himself to turn his eyes back to the building. 

“I’ve been inside it before, you know,” she states proudly.

“Oh, me too. I went - “

“Once - "

"For a - “

“Christmas Lecture.” They say the words in unison and he feels a smile instinctively spread on his face. 

“My father brought me to my first one when I was eight,” she beams at the memory. ”We went every year."

“I always wanted to go when I was younger, but it's a bit of a long trip from Glasgow."

“Right.”

“But when I was at University I came every year.” He’s not sure why he feels the need to explain himself to the stranger. He’s not sure why he feels a strange flash of competition when she informs that she went to Christmas lectures too while she was at University either. 

“Were you in London then?” He can’t remember the last time a woman was this interested in anything he had to say, nevertheless a relative stranger.

“No, I went to Edinburgh."

“You went to Edinburgh?”

“I did.” He puffs his chest out, sensing the disbelief in her voice. “Why’s that so surprising?”

“Just didn’t see a pip.” She glances to his uniform collar and the lack of a star. She’ll ask him now, he knows, why a product of Edinburgh standing in front of the Royal Institute didn’t become an officer.

She informs him she went to Bedford College and seems equally excited to learn they had attended the same lectures and had probably ridden the same train to the Institute. The conversation on the steps of the Royal Institute continues in a hurried, but excited fashion. He stumbles over words when he talks too quickly and interrupts her, but she interrupts him too. It takes ten minutes of conversation about the lectures they’d both taken in while at university before either even introduces themselves. 

She’s the first to extend her hand.

“Jemma Simmons.”

“Leopold Fitz.”

She shakes his hand with a surprising strength and firmness. He’s slow to let go of it. 

"Do you prefer Leo?” He winces at the name only his father uses.

“Just Fitz actually.”

She tells him she’s from Sheffield then, and when he inquires what she’s doing in London her reply that she’s just taken a test takes him by surprise.

“Like with a pen and paper?” 

“Well, it certainly wasn’t with a rifle,” she teases. 

“Obviously not.” He rolls with the barb with surprising ease.

“It was a for a job my old maths supervisor recommended me for.” She chews on her lip uncertainly. He’s known her barely ten minutes, but he knows the look of uncertainty on her face well.

“You know what I like to do when I’m nervous about the results of an exam?” he asks and then doesn’t wait for her to answer. “A crossword puzzle.”

“A crossword puzzle?” she looks at him quizzically.

“You know, the cryptic crosswords from the Telegraph. They keep my mind...occupied,” he admits, somehow sensing she is a young woman whose brain is always occupied too.

“Yes, but that’ll only keep my brain occupied for about five minutes.” She blows out a loud sigh.

“You can do the Telegraph crossword in five minutes?” He can’t help the smile that forms on his face then as he folds his arms across his chest.

“Usually.”

“I can do it in four.” He can’t help his braggadocio. 

“Four minutes?” She forgets about her exam then and sizes him up from head-to-toe in a way that should make him uncomfortable.

“Four minutes,” he affirms, forgetting to be uncomfortable.

The challenge is implicit. He doesn’t know who initiates it, but they soon find themselves on a quest for a Telegraph crossword puzzle so they can learn who can do it fastest. It’s over three hours of wandering around London looking for a discarded paper. The conversation is effortless. He wonders if it’s the shared love of science or perhaps the Christmas lecture connection. He tells her more than he’s told his squaddies in over a year of serving together. About growing up with his mum, and the machines he’d built as a child. He tells her about not fitting in at school and hating every course that wasn't a science. She echoes almost everything he says. Whereas he usually struggles to say anything of interest to a woman, she is hanging off every word. They’re perfectly at ease with each other in a way he’s never been with anyone before, despite having just met this woman. They never find a Telegraph, but neither seem to care.

Somehow they eventually end up on a bench in Kensington Garden beneath a great bronze statue of Edward Jenner. 

“You know, I’m surprised. I’d always heard the Scottish regiments wore kilts,” she looks at his wool battledress.

“Only with the dress kit,” he informs. “Bit impractical for combat.” The lame attempt at a joke works and she just laughs and tells him she’s only been to Scotland once.

“My family took a holiday to Perthshire. It was so lovely.”

He tells her he’s from Glasgow and that London is the furthest he’s ever been from home. The talk of being far from home brings them out of the past quite suddenly.

The playful and teasing tone to her voice she’s had all night suddenly vanishes.

“Are you on your way to France?” He doesn’t dare ask himself why he thinks he hears such trepidation in the voice of a woman he just met.

“I think so,” he replies with a resigned indifference. He knows their sister unit in the 51st Lowland is already over there, fleeing to the coast as they speak. It’s only a matter of time. He’ll be in combat soon.

He wants to ask if he can write to her even though he knows it’s silly. A girl as clever and pretty as her wouldn’t be unattached. Still it would be nice to have someone to write to, someone other than his mum. 

She talks about finding a dance hall with a forcibly cheerful tone, as if a night of dancing can wipe away the looming threat of where he’s headed.

Instead they stay on the bench by the statue of Dr. Jenner. They keep talking about Christmas lectures at the Institute. He shares how he’d hoped after a few more years working at the University lab in Glasgow he could apply for a job at the Institute. She informs him that’s always been her dream job too, but that she’d been forced to stay in Sheffield to help her mum and dad at their shop.

They talk about dreams deferred. Subjects they’ve always wanted to study and things they’d always wanted to do. She reveals the job she’d taken this test for, the one she’s so nervous about, is somehow connected to the war effort. She finally asks the question sometime after midnight. Why a man who can do the Telegraph crossword in four minutes with a degree from Edinburgh was now a private in the King’s Army.

“I mean I had to,” he shrugged simply. “We’re at war.”

“You said you joined a year ago.” They’re prying words, meant to get at the truth behind his motivation in joining. He thinks for a moment about lying again, telling her the same things he’d told his mother about serving Scotland proudly as a Highlander. He can’t make the lie form from his lips, but he can’t seem to tell her the complete truth either. Out loud it seems far too foolish a reason. 

So he tells her all about his father instead. His estrangement from his mum and service in Egypt, Palestine and India. He tells her about living with the scorn and disappointment of a man who believes him to be inferior in every way. In the end, he doesn’t have to tell her why he joined. She’s intuitive. She understands him.

Rather than question him further about it, she tells him, in turn, about the correcting cast she had to wear for her scoliosis as a child. How she’d been homebound for over a year and how her parents thought she’d fall far behind her classmates, but the opposite had happened. She tells him about being bored by most of her coursework, even at university, and longing for something more. It feels like she’s talking about his own life and all he can do is nod fervently and agree.

“Not just a challenge. I want an adventure!” Her eyes shine brightly. They muse then over the adventure he’s about to depart on, trying desperately to put a positive spin on the uncertain future he faces. 

Sometimes before sunrise she takes his hand, gives it a squeeze, and asks him to write her.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

He leaves Southampton aboard the Prins Albert at 1400 hours on a Saturday in June and is sick three times before they arrive across the Channel at Cherbourg. It’s his first time at sea and, though his legs feel like jelly, it’s not seasickness that has him so ill. They sit in the harbour for hours waiting for the French authorities to finally allow them to debark. He keeps waiting to hear the bombers of the Luftwaffe screaming overhead or feel the ship list suddenly to the side when struck with a torpedo. 

Leadership had tried to keep the news from France under wraps, but they’d all heard about the disaster at Dunkirk. He knows they’re the rescue squad, but he can hardly believe a bunch of Saturday Night soldiers from Glasgow are here to rescue the British Expeditionary Force.

“You are the BEF now,” their commander had declared firmly.

If it was supposed to be inspiring, Fitz isn’t inspired. They haven’t done any battle drills or preparation. He has no idea what to do if his platoon meets a column of German tanks. He has no idea what he’s doing here. 

He thinks about Jemma and the perfect night they’d shared in London. He’d penned a letter to both her and his mum on the Channel crossing. Both letters are in the breast pocket of his uniform.

He had tried not to read too much into her request to write him. She was a warm, friendly person who had been kind to a soldier doomed for the front. Deep down he knows it’s more than pity that had kept them talking all night, but somehow thinking that it’s pity is more comforting than the alternative. 

The roads are crowded with refugees moving west. It’s a bizarre feeling to be heading into the place everyone is fleeing, especially when he just wants to flee too. They’ve been officially christened the 2nd British Expeditionary Force and their mission is to cover the withdrawal of what’s left of the original BEF in France. He tries to recall the sand tables and maps of the Cotentin Peninsula and Norman coast they’d received at the mission brief in Cherbourg. He knows they’re hundreds of miles from the Germans, but the thought offers him little assurance. Their troop carrier seems to crawl along and, much like he had in the ship, he keeps waiting for Stuka bombers to start screaming overhead. 

He thinks about his mum and feels awash in guilt at leaving her alone. 

Then he thinks about Jemma and the adventure she’d spoken about. It gives him a strange sense of calm, thinking about her words about being meant for something bigger. He wonders what became of the test she took and if she got the position.

They drive all night and finally come to a halt twenty miles outside the city of Rouen. It’s been nearly twenty-four hours since they left England. He desperately just wants to put his head on a pillow, but he makes do with his rucksack. Despite the order to sleep, he doubts he’ll get any. 

He thinks first of his father when they dig in, about his stories from the Great War, and his insistence that war makes a man better. He gazes up at the stars and thinks then about Jemma’s story about her dad's telescope and all the constellations she’d memorised within the first week of having it. He finds Delphinus, Lyra, and Cygnus and is comforted by the thought that perhaps, even at this early morning hour, she’s looking at the same constellations too.

They spend two days doing little but cleaning weapons and manning observation posts. He writes to Jemma both days. He pours out in his letters much the same things he had that incredible night in London. He knows he can’t tell her anything about what’s happening here. He can’t tell her how he heard German troops were close to Paris or how thinly-defended their 150 km front is. Nor can he reveal that his brigade has just come under the command of the Tenth French Army. So he tells her about the Norman countryside, the Calvados cider the French people had brought them, and the bizarre combination of boredom and fear that seizes his every moment.

It feels strange to think all his years of education have been to ready him to sit in a muddy hole cleaning the bolt assembly of a rifle he hopes he’ll never have to shoot. 

He writes to her and feels guilty a woman he’s barely known one week now has three letters in his breast pocket and his mum only has one. He tells her about the sights in Normandy. The cows and hedgerows. The farms and swamps. He tells her about the squaddies he shares a foxhole with who worked in the foundries and shipyards back in Glasgow. He tells her about how despite months with this group that’s supposed to be his family he still doesn’t seem to belong. 

They have little information about enemy intel and he keeps his head on a swivel at all hours. He expects to find the Germans each time he goes to relieve himself at the trench at the edge of their bivouac site. Soon Jemma has three letters in his pocket. 

He’s writing her a fourth letter when things start to happen. Their platoon sergeant barks a few brusque orders and he stuffs the half-finished letter to Jemma back in his rucksack. They pack up quickly and march all night in the dark to apparently take over the right sector of a front that’s supposed to stretch all the way to the sea. He keeps an eye on the constellations and realizes they’re traveling south. He tries to remember his training as he clutches his Enfield rifle and monitors his sector. They travel muddy unimproved roads, marching further than any ruck they’d ever taken back at Aldershot before finally loading up on trucks at a depot south of Rouen. He tries to ignore that he sees most trucks moving the opposite way they are headed.

Movement finally stops around sunrise, east of a tiny village called Conches. He can see the spire of the village cathedral in the early morning sun and can't help but think about Jemma and how they’d watched the sun stretch over London on that bench in Kensington Garden. Then he wonders what’s happening in the tiny village. Whether the priest of that parish and the baker and schoolmaster will take their family and flee when they hear the front lines have come to their home.

“It’s not the front line, you twat!” his squaddies laugh derisively. But that’s exactly what this is. The Army of Paris is supposed to be holding the line all the way to the Seine. Fitz tries not to be unnerved that his lieutenant only says “supposed to”. There is no confirmation that the French unit is actually in position. The LT is unusually honest and tells them all as much as he knows, which unnerves Fitz even more. They’re in an exposed position. There’s a gap of eight miles on their right flank. There are two brand new French battalions on their left, soldiers as wet behind the ears as they are. Their job is to maintain the line here until further orders. Most importantly, intel reports little enemy activity in the area.

He finishes his letter to Jemma and updates her on the latest happenings in his grand adventure. He tells her about marching all night and the small village to the west and how pretty France is. He knows she’ll be able to read through his words. She’ll see how the letter was interrupted. She’ll know he’s moved closer to the Germans and the fear he’s desperately trying to disguise. 

Word trickles through around midday that their brigade has been renamed the Norman Force. The troop carriers they’d seen moving the opposite direction as them had been the rest of the division, sent back to cover the actual withdrawal of British forces all the way to Brittany. They are remaining to hold the line with the French Army. Fitz wants to know why it's them. Why the 1st Battalion, Glasgow Highlanders are the ones elected to slow the German advance. 

They hear the place where they'd spent their first night in France has now been occupied by armored columns of German tanks and that elements of the Tenth Army they’re technically now a part of have surrendered.

So many rumors are being exchanged and word is travelling so quickly, he tries to make sense of it all. The Bosche are coming. The rest of the 2nd BEF is in all-out retreat. The Saturday Night Soldiers of the Highland Light Infantry are the ones left to hold the line. He thinks now about his mum’s plea to commission, about his father telling him to join the Engineers. He laughs at his erroneous belief that joining the Territorials would somehow keep him out of combat longer.

He looks around at the lads from Glasgow, thinking about their training exercises from Maryhill to Aldershot. He tries not to imagine what will happen if they don’t hold this position. If the rest of the Army isn’t able to return across the Channel. If France falls and all of Britain is next. He thinks of his mum. Then he thinks of Jemma.

Then he hears the snap of a bullet.


	2. Chapter 2

There is no hero’s welcome. Their return to Southampton is a relatively quiet affair, which is perfectly fine with Fitz. He doesn’t know what he’d expected to feel like after his first experience in combat, but he hadn’t expected to feel like such a failure. 

There’s an underlying feeling of disappointment and frustration, not just in his company, but in the entire battalion. All they had done was retreat. The job of the Highlanders had been to save what was left of the original BEF and to cover their withdrawal, but all they had done was retreat and save themselves. It was an entire week of withdrawal, one ten mile march at a time. 

Fitz tries to think of any small victories in the days following their return. As a unit, the battalion of Glasgow lads had successfully manned the long thinly-held 130 mile line for four days. They’d held up under fire before the order to retreat finally came. As a soldier, he knew now the terrifying feeling of knowing enemy rounds were aimed for him. He’d even fired his rifle twice, though the only times he’d managed to squeeze the trigger, he’d been shooting blind without eyes on an actual human target. He’d hardly call it battle hardened. Mostly he feels like all he’d done was run away.

Of course, in the letters to his mum he’d told her it had all been very uneventful. Little more than a week long camping trip in France. He hadn’t encountered any Germans and he certainly hadn’t been shot at and fled from them. He tells her instead about the wonderful private billets here in Bedford that they’ve been allotted for two weeks of recovery, about the kind townsfolk and local caterers who are feeding them well.

Their only duty is guarding the local post office and the power station and neither are particularly arduous tasks. It’s dull duty that his fellow soldiers hate, but he’s happy to not be bombed or shot at and grateful for the dull monotony. He returns to the small flat where he and two other soldiers are billeted after pulling sentry all afternoon.  
The town has opened its doors to the Highlanders. Every home with any available room is housing at least two soldiers. His landlady is a short matronly woman who has sent two sons off to the Royal Navy and seems eager to have young men in the house again. She greets him warmly as he arrives in and pulls off his service cap. When she informs him she’s put a kettle on for tea and that she’ll be doing the wash tomorrow it’s a comfort that feels almost like being home.

“I also mailed your letters,” she adds absentmindedly as she totters around the kitchen.

“My letters?” Fitz repeats in question, even though he’d heard her properly. “But they - I - I didn’t ask - ” he stammers. 

“I know. I saw them sitting there by our bed and took the liberty, dear. The least I could do.” 

Fitz’s mouth goes dry as he tries to thank her for the kind gesture. He’d wanted to send his mum’s letters off, of course, but he had no intention of sending anything off to Jemma. The larger the stack of letters he’d written to her grew, the more embarrassed he’d felt about the attachment he’d clearly developed for her in a week’s time. Inviting him to write her the occasional letter was one thing, but the pages of letters he’d written her were quite another. Removed now from the loneliness and terror that had gripped him in Normandy, he feels foolish having written so fervently to a relative stranger.

Likely intrigued by the numbers of letters he’d addressed to a single Sheffield address, his landlady can’t help but ask if he has a sweetheart..

“No, not a sweetheart,” he dismisses, though the words feel like a bit of a lie. “Just a friend.”

Somehow, he’s not sure if those words are even right either. 

He tries not to think about her much as days crawl by and turn into weeks. He convinces himself that, beyond their shared love of science, there had been nothing there but civility and kindness behind her actions that evening in London. 

The battalion soon leaves the comfortable private billets in Bedford and the landlady that reminds him of his mum. Instead they move to a camp in West Suffolk that they build themselves. Instead of four walls and a warm mattress, he shares a canvas tent with three other squads and has a stiff camp bed. The necessary steps they take to make the tent safe from an air attack, digging it in beneath the oak trees and surrounding it with sandbags, reminds him of what they’d just left behind in France. The terrifying thought that the chaos across the Channel could easily be brought here grips him whenever they hear the news every day about another airfield or radar station bombed by the Luftwaffe. He worries about his mum and hopes she’s okay and not too worried about him. He tries not to worry about Jemma.

He wishes she would become a distant memory, that he could make himself forget the six hours he’d spent in her company nearly two months ago. He wishes he didn’t have to fight the urge to write her everyday.

Their mail finally catches up with them in August. It takes nearly an hour to pass out the letters that have accumulated in the weeks since returning from France . There are four letters total for him when they call his name, three are from his mum. The fourth is written in script that should be unfamiliar, but somehow isn’t. He recognizes it immediately. The graceful ordered letters are perfectly formed. He never knew handwriting could look like so much like a person before, but he doesn’t even have to look at the Sheffield address to know it’s from Jemma.

Somehow he resists tearing open the letter in front of his platoon. He tucks it away in between his mum’s letters and returns to his tent, where he sits down atop of his foot locker and engrosses himself in a letter written nearly two months ago.

It’s nearly four pages long. She tells him how wonderful it had been to receive his letter, how much she’d liked hearing about the countryside in Normandy, how she’d read the papers and tried her best to stay abreast of the events there, but nothing was very specific. She tells him to be safe and says she’ll write again soon.  
The following day a stack of letters, so large it earns several whistles from his squaddies, arrives. This time she doesn’t try to be so chipper. She tells him how afraid she is, upon seeing the date he’d sent the letter, that he’s become a POW. She briefly explains what became of her peculiar test in London, how she’d received a letter that told her to report to a remote Buckinghamshire village for a clerical position eleven days later. His heart soars at the thought that she’s only in Buckinghamshire and curses that they’re not still billeted in Bedford where he could have walked to see her.

The letters continue to pour in over the course of the week. His lack of a response hadn’t deterred her from writing. While he had been embarrassed by his five letters from France, she has written him eighteen times in the last two months. Some are long and some are short. She talks about nothing and everything. Her landlady and the girls she rooms with. The book she is reading. Churchill's latest speech to the House of Commons. A crossword puzzle from the Telegraph falls out from between the pages of one of them. At the top she has written 5:18. He grins, recognizing the challenge and immediately goes to work.

He completes it in five minutes and twenty-two seconds and sends it back to her with a five-page letter. He apologizes four times for not writing her more upon leaving France, but doesn’t know quite how to explain himself. He tries to tell her how they’d moved camps twice and how mail had been so slow to catch up. He tells her how he’d been in Bedford for two weeks and how sad he was to leave, how they built the camp here at Denston Hall from the ground up, and how much he’s enjoying the monotonous life there.

It takes almost three weeks of stunted correspondence for their letters to sync up. Bombs begin falling on radar stations and RAF regularly by the time they can carry on a stilted conversation, and it seems like the invasion of the island is imminent. Her excitement upon receiving his first response is palpable. She tells him not to apologize and asks if he is allowed to leave the camp and could they perhaps meet in Cambridge sometime this month. His sergeant spots the corners of his mouth turning up as he reads the invitation in the letter and takes the piss about what could possibly cause Private Fitz to smile. 

“Do the liberty buses run to Cambridge?” he asks, hoping the sergeant won’t pry too much.

“They’ll take you to Newmarket.” Fitz can see he’s suppressing a smile. “Are all those letters coming from Cambridge?”

“N- no,” Fitz replies much too quickly. The sergeant seizes the letter from his hand and looks at the postmark with an ever-widening grin.

“Have you got a sweetheart, Fitz? The lads said they thought you might.”

Fitz shakes his head vehemently and the sergeant just roars with laughter at his denial and walks away. 

He’s not alone on the bus to Newmarket the following weekend and has to endure the same series of questions from men in his battalion about what’s waiting for him in Cambridge. He doesn’t know how to respond to the questions about who he is meeting. A friend he’d met in London. A girl he’d promised to write. He’s adamant about not calling her anything else.

His knees bounce nervously as he waits for her on the platform at Cambridge Rail Station, constantly adjusting his service cap and fidgeting with the cuffs of his sleeves. She sees him before he sees her, quickening her pace, and racing to him, making the crowd part for her.

“Oh, Fitz.” The words sound in his ear as she exhales loudly and throws her arms around his neck. 

“Hi.” 

Much like his measly five letters, his lame greeting does nothing to dampen her enthusiasm. She grips him tightly, longer than even his mum hugs him. His arms don’t quite envelop her the way hers do. He stretches his fingers out, wanting to squeeze her just as tight, but paralyzed with uncertainty. Her frankness and unabashed emotion surprise him.

“I was so worried about you.” The words are muffled into his neck and he shivers at the feel of her breath on him.

“M’alright,” he dismisses, pulling away from the hug only because he thinks another moment of being pressed this close to her might cause his pants to tighten. “Just been digging ditches in Denston all week.”

“I can’t believe you’re so close.” She beams. “Of all the places to be stationed.”

“I wish we were still in Bedford.” He tells her about how his landlady had reminded him a bit of his mum as they begin to walk from the rail station. He doesn’t seem to know where they’re headed, but she seems confident in her direction of travel. There are few cars, which he knows is because of the petrol rationing, but it somehow makes it feel like the city has emptied just for them. 

Reminders of wartime are there, mostly the touch of sandbags, and the sound of RAF training aircraft circling overhead, but the University is remarkably insulated. There are students punting on the River Cam and a small picnic by the brook. He asks if she’s ever been here before. 

“No, but I always wanted to.” Her breath catches at the first glimpse of the College lawn.

“Me too.” He smiles wistfully at the coincidence, wondering if they ever would have crossed paths if they’d attended University at the same time. Perhaps that would be them discussing a lecture under the trees. He wonders if she’s pondering the same paths their lives could have taken as she gazes at the students, who somehow despite all that’s going on look carefree. 

“Do you think they’ll come here?” Her voice is unusually small and quiet.

“Who?” 

“The Germans.” Now her voice is nearly a whisper and he can see now she’s not gazing at the students, but at the sandbags piled up around the ground floor of a building. He feels stupid now for even having to ask her to clarify what she meant with planes roaring overhead and him clad in battledress. She makes him forget they’re at war. He wonders if that’s why he liked writing her so much when he was in France.

“No.“ He tries his best to sound confident for her. It seems to work because she doesn’t ask any more questions about the war again. Instead she talks again about how much she’d wanted to attend Cambridge, but how her parents wanted her to go to a proper women’s college.

“My father wanted me to go to Edinburgh,” Fitz explains shortly. The remark sparks an inquiry from Jemma about where exactly his father is. “Last I heard the Black Watch was in Africa somewhere.”

The short reply tells her all she needs to know and the questions about his father cease. He allows his mind again to wander, imagining a world where their parents hadn’t forced their paths away from this place. A world where perhaps they’d found each other sooner and the world wasn’t at war.

She tells him about the science journals she’s been able to get her hands on in the last few months, babbling first about a paper on the bactericidal action of penicillin and then a Russian-American who has built an amphibious aircraft with a rotor configuration that flew straight up in the air. He asks more questions than she can answer about both, positing on the uses of both in wartime. Each time he makes an inquiry it seems to make her smile.

She doesn't talk much about her job. All he can get out of her is that she is a clerk of some kind. When he presses her for further questions, she loses her articulateness and begins stammering incomprehensible answers that don’t make sense or changes the subject completely.

Now it’s his turn to smile.

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m not lying!”

“I mean really awful,” he teases again at her overly impassioned denial. She’s not laughing though. She looks pained, like she’s in some kind of physical discomfort. They pause momentarily, halfway across a covered stone bridge somewhere by St. John’s College. He comments on the neo-Gothic architecture and she tells him how this was one of Queen Victoria’s favorite places to visit. The mindless conversation, the fact that they both know all the intricacies of this place, seems to put her at ease.

He doubts she is merely a typist at a radio factory, as she claims, but he also knows if what he suspects is true then she can’t say anything further. And he doesn’t know much about Jemma Simmons yet, but he senses she is loyal. So he doesn’t ask the question he desperately wants to ask. Whether this interview she’d gotten back in June through her old Maths professor involves working for the Home Office. He just asks her if she can send him some of these publications she’s reading and tells her to keep sending crosswords because they’re tied now at three and have yet to determine who can complete it the fastest.

His uniform draws more attention than he’d like. He imagines soldiers don’t frequently walk the grounds of Cambridge, remarking on Department Heads and professors he’d wished he had.

They pause atop another bridge, this one a unique curved footbridge built entirely of straight timbers. He remarks on what a brilliant bit of engineering it is and how clever the tangent and radial trussing is to make it appear curved. “You know the current engineering chair was the first ever Fellow in Mechanical Sciences at King’s. He designed most of the bridges for the Metropolitan Railroad.”

“You like bridges,” she remarks with a smile.

“I just like building things,” he shrugs simply. “I suppose bridges were the first things I ever built when I was small. You know, with blocks and things. I liked the idea of...supporting things. Making things of use. Things that will last.”

“And yet you didn’t join the Royal Engineers.” She cocks her head in question. Sometimes he gets the idea when she looks at him that she’s still trying to figure him out. 

“Engineers mostly blow bridges up,” he reminds her with a raise of his eyebrows.

“They can build them too.”

“I think they blow up more than they build,” he insists with a laugh. He doesn’t want to spell out for her that the reason he didn’t join the Royal Engineers was simply because it was precisely what his father had wanted, and for once in his life he didn’t want to do exactly as he’d bid.

“How do you know so much about the chair of Engineering at Cambridge?”

“I told you. I worked in the lab at the University in Glasgow. Got to read quite a bit about what was happening in the field.”

”And then you joined the Army,” she mumbles the words to herself more than to him. She’s trying to figure him out again.

“And then I joined the Army,” he repeats anyway.

Two RAF planes fly in formation on a training run overhead. Two boys out on the lawn whoop and holler and wave as they pass by. Fitz can’t help but think about how the pilots of the RAF have been exalted while his Battalion’s return from France had gone almost entirely unnoticed.

“Seems like everybody wants to fly a Spitfire these days,” she remarks, noting the adulation on everyone’s face as they watch the planes fly by.

“Those aren’t Spitfires, they’re Hurricanes,” he remarks calmly.

“And when did you join the RAF?” she sputters in surprise, but he can tell she’s impressed.

“Mostly you can tell by the wings. See how they’re not elliptical like the Spitfires. Also look close when it comes by again, at the radiator housing, how it’s right below. It’s not like that on a Spitfire.” He notes the obvious look of wonder on her face and explains himself. “There’s not much to do when you’re pulling sentry except watch the planes that come round,” he explains, though he knows none of the other soldier in A Company watch the aircraft with the same technical eye he does. He can sense from the way she’s looking at him that she knows that too. “The sound of the Spitfires too. The engine. You hear it once when it comes to save your arse you don’t forget it.” The words are the first he’s spoken about his time in France and she grows quiet, but much like he hadn’t pressed her on whatever work she is doing for the government, she doesn’t press him.

When they pass the ruined buildings and rubble from an air attack on the way to the Rail Station, she links her arm around his. He tells himself it’s simply to steady herself as they walk past the uneven terrain, but she doesn’t remove it when they return to the smooth pavement. Even as they arrive at the Station she seems reluctant to let go of him. He wants to ask if they’re courting, but lacks the courage. They make plans to see each other again soon, but neither can say when. 

===================================================================

Letters back and forth between Camp Denston and Bletchley fill the time in between his next visit to Cambridge. He writes her nearly every day and receives a letter just as frequently. Neither can tell about the work they’re really doing. Instead they exchange crosswords and talk about their days. They write a little about the war. About the Italians in Greece and U-Boats in the Atlantic. Neither want to talk about the bombs that fall daily and the terror that grips the country. The fear and uncertainty is obvious in nearly every word. He thinks perhaps that’s why they comfort themselves with scientific certainties and theories they can reason through. He doesn’t know how she has access to so many published papers, but she seems to enjoy sharing the summaries with him and hearing his thoughts. One is all about rendering serum chemically stable by freeze-drying it. He writes back about the possibility of applying the same process to other pharmaceuticals, maybe even food and laughs about how much his field rations could improve. Other times it’s about the synthetic rubber she hears the Americans are manufacturing for tires, which makes him wonder if they will be used on tank tracks going to Africa.

Always the letters are signed with the same formal farewell. The two words that tell him they are most certainly not courting. Your dear friend, Jemma.

There’s an attachment there that speaks to more than friendship and scientific inquiry though. When he tells her he’s saved up his wages to come and visit her in Bedford, her happiness is obvious through the pages. The actual letters on the page are more rushed and hurried, like she can’t wait to tell him how excited she is to have him there. Likewise, her disappointment is clear when his leave is revoked after an abrupt move from Camp Denston to the stables at Newmarket. Her words are forcibly cheerful, trying to make it seem as if there aren’t forty more kilometers between them now. Still he’s determined to see her again. 

There are two air raids along in as many weeks. His battalion helps support the anti-aircraft defenses for two straight days, but the Luftwaffe don’t show up in full force. Then there’s word the invasion is finally coming and all four Battalions in the Division stand to for nearly a week. Still he’s determined to see her before they leave for Winter Quarters. 

It takes three buses and nearly four hours to travel to Bedford with most of his time being spent waiting to catch the next bus. He thinks about what he’ll say to her when he sees her after two more months of nothing but words on a page. There’s evidence of air attacks in the little town he called home this summer. Two months ago the village was untouched by the war aside from housing a battalion of Scottish infantrymen. Now there are piles of rubble where he knows rows of buildings used to stand. 

“It’s awful.” Jemma looks out at the wreckage. “Everyday I hope maybe that’ll be the last of it.”

“You haven’t had any air raids, have you?”

“See a few planes fly over, but that’s all.”

“That’s good.” He’s relieved to hear whatever she is doing she seems as insulated as the students at Cambridge. “Two bombs fell on camp this month, but nothing - ”

“You were bombed?” she cries out in alarm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He gives a dismissive shrug and reminds her that he’s been bombed before, to a much more terrifying extent. He can see she looks upset by the news and asks her what’s wrong.

“You just...never really talked about France.”

“Not much to tell really.”

“I didn’t know you were bombed.”

“Everyone that was in France was bombed,” he states matter-of-factly. He wants to add that lately everyone in England is getting bombed too, but he senses that will just make her more upset.

He remembers all too well how small her voice had gotten when she’d asked him if he thought the Germans were really going to invade.

Sometimes he has a hard time believing that it’s been five months since he ran from the Germans. She’s right. He hasn’t talked with her about France at all. There’s so much about his time there he’s never shared with anyone. He knows he’ll never tell his mum, but sometimes he wants to tell Jemma about the waves of people and mass of undisciplined rabble they’d had to push through. How they’d had to leave so many people behind. He still remembers the pitiful fleeing caravans they came across that had obviously been attacked by the air. The sight of overturned hand-barrows and broken heirlooms, the dead horses with their legs straight up in the air. The corpses. He’d never smelled death before and hasn’t been able to forget the sweet sickly aroma since. 

“I think we’re moving to Winter Quarters soon,” he tells her abruptly. 

“Winter quarters? Where will that be?”

“Don’t know. Been hearing north. So probably back in Scotland somewhere.” 

“Oh.” Her disappointment is as evident as his. Still she tries to smile. “That’ll be nice, won’t it? To be back home. Maybe you’ll get to see your mum.’

He just smiles and nods his head, hoping it can disguise the obvious. He wants to tell her he’ll miss her, how letters and a crossword won’t be nearly enough. 

“I’ll write you as soon as I have a proper address,” he says instead, hating himself for being such a coward. 

“Please.” The plaintive request makes him wonder if she wants to say something more.

She doesn’t. 

They sit in silence for a moment on a bench by the bus depot. He doesn’t know how to say goodbye and it seems like neither does she. 

“Do you really have to leave so soon?” she asks instead, though he knows she knows the answer. 

“It takes three buses to get back,” he informs unhappily. 

“Right,” she replies glumly. They both sink into silence. The island is being terrorized from the air. He’s not sure what the future holds, whether the invasion will really come, whether he’ll go to Winter Quarters or down to the Mediterranean. If it's two months until he sees her again, he knows that is hardly a guarantee. 

“Jemma - ”

“Fitz - “

They utter each other’s names at the same time and speak the next words in unison.

“Be safe.”


	3. Chapter 3

The entire battalion huddles in the Newmarket station for over an hour, waiting for the train to take them north. Fitz recalls a similar situation months ago that somehow feels like years. Then they'd been preparing to move in the opposite direction, off into the unknown. He had been a bundle of nervous energy, jabbering to anyone who would listen about all the different ways they could be killed before they even arrived in France. This time it's their commander who is on edge. News that the Luftwaffe were targeting railyards to hinder troop movements causes him to do nothing but pace and fret. Fitz can hear him hissing to the other company commanders about the idiocy of having six-hundred infantrymen congested on the platform. Fitz knows it wasn't supposed to be like this. His company had arrived here two hours ago, their captain constantly glancing at his watch and insisting they would be the first company to depart. But as minutes ticked by, no trains came, and more companies had arrived. The carefully arranged staggered arrival turns into a disorganized mass of soldiers. It seems somehow fitting.

*The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.* He writes to Jemma, musing about how fitting it is that a Scot should have coined the phrase.

He wants to be excited about being back in Scotland, but mostly he's frustrated. It's not just being further from Jemma. It's that going north somehow feels a bit like retreating and retreating is, so far, all that his battalion has done. There's talk about a force headed to North Africa and a possible naval attack on the Italians, even a joint operation with the Greeks. The RAF does battle every day with the Luftwaffe, but the soldiers of the Highland Light Infantry are heading back home to Scotland.

When he first learns they're headed to Perthshire, he's embarrassed his first thought is that it's the one place in Scotland Jemma said she has visited and not that he'll be 130 km from home. The battalion is spread out around the small village of Comrie and the entire Highland Light Infantry is supposedly stretched from Edinburgh to Aberdeen.

It feels a bit like their time in Bedford, only without the private billets. Each company has their own private canteen run by the ladies of the town though and Fitz eats the best he has since he joined. There's talk about Christmas dinner and intercompany football matches. Aside from an initial brief by the Commander about manning the defenses of something called the Scottish Command Line that they haven't even seen there's not much discussion about what their job or training will involve. They're not going anywhere, that much he knows. Their attempt at a ground campaign on the continent had failed miserably. Their job now is to prevent an invasion.

He writes Jemma as soon as he gets an address just like he promised. He tells her about how good it is to be back in Scotland. His company is the only one in the battalion stationed across the River Earn in the little town of Dalginross and he describes to her how the High Street reminds him a bit of Bedford. He tells her about the steel bridge that links his company with others, hoping it will be a fond reminder of the many bridges they'd walked across that perfect day in Cambridge. It seems an age ago. He tries to describe it all, the iron railings that serve as parapets and the four stylish ramps that rise above the sandstone piers. He crosses the bridge daily and can't help but think about her each time he does.

He receives her letters at a regular rate, at least three each week, and writes to her with the same frequency. The threat of an invasion seems to have subsided with winter storms making conditions on the Channel too rough for a crossing. Still the air raids don't subside. In fact, they begin to hit Scotland on a more frequent basis. They are small towns with no strategic importance and seem to do nothing but instill fear in everyone, which he assumes is the point.

He worries more about his mum than he does himself. Upon his insistence, she writes and tells him the location of every air raid shelter within 2 km of their home. He writes her careful instructions about what to do if she is caught out in the open, how to keep her mouth open and lie down like they've been trained to avoid the blast overpressure that could cause her lungs to burst. His mum's letters give a stark picture of life back home. She tells him about the strict regulations, the curfews, blackouts and rationing.

Jemma's letters, on the other hand, seem remarkably insulated from the war. She still says nothing about the work she does. He wonders if she realizes how obvious her silence is. Instead she talks about how the girls she works with had a music recital and how they had smuggled a barrel of cider into the house where they're billeted. It sounds a bit like university and he tells her so. She, in turn, tells him about her University days in London. So he tells her about his experiences at Edinburgh.

The conversation is harmless and distracting. Each letter feels like that night he met her outside of the Royal Institution. They share favorite lectures and theorems and classmates who had never quite understood them. When he sits down to read her letter he doesn't worry about the bombs that fall on Scotland daily and the threat to his mum. They're 46 miles from the coast and the talk every day in the canteen is about the possibility of Hitler invading from Norway. Still the pace of their training doesn't quicken. Road marches and trips to the rifle range don't command nearly as much intensity as the talk of a boxing competition in the battalion or who will win the division football championship.

It's a week after the fact when he hears about Sheffield.

The first letter, written in the immediate aftermath, assures him her family is okay. The Germans seem to have focused on the steelworks, far from the neighborhood she calls home. The letter that follows the second raid three days later makes him feel as helpless as he had leaving France. Her father's shop, her family's livelihood, has been completely destroyed by incendiary bombs.

He doesn't know how to respond. For the first time in a year and a half in uniform, he is hit with the urge to go AWOL. Her note is short, formal and detached, relaying what details she knows and that's all. For a week she writes him about nothing but the damage done to her home. The two raids hadn't just targeted the steelworks. It hadn't been as bad as Coventry, but it certainly wasn't a strategic raid. 154 schools are hit, 3 hotels full of people, hospitals, churches, even the Brammal Lane football ground. Her letters take on a decidedly different tone. They lose their levity for nearly a month. Gone is the talk about going to the dance hall and ice skating with her coworkers. Even his letter telling her about Christmas with his mum and Hogmany with his squaddies doesn't draw much of a response from her.

Instead she starts talking about the possibility of joining him in service in the Women's Royal Navy Service. Then in the next she wants to quit her job and go back home to help her family. All her wages start pouring back to Sheffield. The shop had major structural damage and her father lost almost all his inventory. Fitz asks lamely if there's anything he can do, knowing there isn't.

Despite the horror, there is a steely resolve and firmness to her letters that he admires. Her letters convey more anger than sadness. There's a will to fight that somehow makes his heart swell with pride. Talk about joining the WRENS doesn't dissipate, but she maintains that the work she is doing is important.

He echoes that wirelesses are important to the war effort, despite his continued certainty that she doesn't work at a factory that produces them. He even goes so far as to recount her with a story from his time in France about the wireless, the first he's ever shared about his time over there.

He paints a vivid picture for her, surprised at how easily the memories he'd tried to forget return. He explains how it came after their first night on the line. They already felt isolated in their hasty defenses, positioned on the far-left flank, with B Company on one side and, supposedly a French unit on the other. Nobody had heard from or seen any evidence of the French unit. For all they knew, the Germans had already gotten them. Enemy sniper fire, though fortunately inaccurate, ensured nobody slept. Morning arrived with few soldiers having slept and everyone on edge. Rumors passed down the line, first about a German attack on the main road and then about a complete withdrawal back to the port of Cherbourg 200 km away. Many of the men were ready for the former, eager to have their first proper battle, while many like Fitz had been more than happy to retreat in the face of the, seemingly unstoppable, German war machine. All they'd heard in their week in country had been about units retreating and towns falling to the Germans. All they'd seen were signs of defeat.

That's when their wireless had stopped working and the inexperienced subaltern had panicked. Paralyzed how to proceed with the withdrawal, or even if they should without official confirmation, he had ordered the entire platoon to remain in their defensive positions until they received word from higher. So while the rest of the Company had retreated from their thinly-held 150km front, A Company 4 Platoon stayed in place, with the Germans drawing ever closer. It was his sergeant who, knowing Fitz's background as an engineer, had ordered Fitz in to try to get the wireless working. He tells Jemma with utmost certainty that getting the communications working had most definitely saved them from capture.

The intent behind his story is to affirm that, if she is indeed working in a wireless factory, she is an essential part of the war effort. However, all Jemma sees in the letter is that he had saved his platoon. She heaps praise on him, asking how he'd kept his nerve, what the problem had been, how he'd diagnosed it, and what exactly he'd done to get it working.

He tells her all about the short-wave wireless set, the bulky pack receiver in its pressed steel case with its hand-cranked generator. She asks about the RF output and frequency range, asking if he's ever opened it up to look at the vibratory unit and accumulator.

The technical inquiries make him smile. He's never met anyone whose brain works so much like his before. Despite having a background in medical sciences, she clearly seems to clearly understand how a wireless works. He wonders if perhaps she does truly work at a factory that makes them.

Talk about short range communications and Wireless Set #18 seems to comfort her, or at the very least distract the from the destruction of her home. He's standing outside the postal office, leaning against the wall and reading one of her letters, unable to stop a grin from forming on his face. She is telling him about a film she'd seen in the cinema, describing in detail the ridiculous plot about three drunken sailors who accidentally climbed aboard a German ship. It's rare she spends money on herself since the raid on Sheffield and, despite how silly she seems to have found the film, he's pleased to read about the indulgence.

"Private Fitz?"

"That's me," he mutters absentmindedly without looking up, reluctant to put down the letter. She's talking now about how the film's portrayal of the philandering sailors had ushered in a conversation later that night about the passions and libidos of men in uniform and his interest piques.

"You need to come with me." The brusque order causes Fitz to finally look up and he snaps to attention and renders a salute upon realizing the men addressing him is the company executive officer. He's had minimal interaction with any of the company officers in the nearly two years he's been in the service and feels his palms immediately start to sweat, despite the lieutenant's command to stand at ease.

He leads Fitz down the High Street to Company Headquarters while Fitz's brain races at what could possibly cause him to be summoned by the officer. He knows this wouldn't be the protocol if something had happened to his mum and wonders if perhaps there has been news of his father. Instead, as soon as they're behind closed doors the man asks him about Jemma, whose letter is still clutched in Fitz's left hand.

"Jemma?" The name is the last he expected to hear from an officer.

"Yes. Jemma Simmons. The woman you write to every day."

"She's a…friend," Fitz stumbles, trying to ignore the incredulous look on the lieutenant's face.

"Yeah? Why are you telling her all about our wireless sets, Private?"

"Our wireless? I just...she - she works at – a er – it's a wireless factory - where she works." He stammers incomprehensibly, still so caught off-guard by the mention of Jemma here of all places.

"And what does she do at this factory?"

"She's a clerk."

"A clerk who you inform how to float charge the accumulator on our receivers..."

Fitz feels his cheeks redden. He should have known better than to put that kind of information in a letter. He'd been so thrilled to talk

"She - erm – she just likes the sciences and – well - knowing how things work, like - like me," he admits, attempting to speak with a bit more composure, but knowing he's failing miserably. He's never had a conversation this long with an officer. And while the lieutenant doesn't seem antagonistic, he certainly doesn't seem pleased with Fitz.

"So I've heard." The young officer purses his lips and stares at Fitz. "You're an Edinburgh man, no?" He doesn't wait for Fitz to reply. It looks like he already has his service record pulled out on the desk, along with what looks like one of his letters to Jemma. "So do you have an arrangement?" he asks then. "You and Miss Simmons?"

"How do you mean?"

"Are you engaged? Do you have some kind of romantic agreement?"

"What? No, I – I told you we're friends."

"She writes you every day, private." The incredulous look reappears on the lieutenant's face. Fitz says nothing in reply, just stares at the clock on the wooden desk, watching the seconds tick by, knowing his silence is likely only incriminating himself further, but unsure why his relationship with Jemma is being called into question by the company executive officer. "Your squad leader said you were quiet." The lieutenant smiles and leans back in his chair then. "Well, as long as you're not trying to insist Rangers are superior to Celtic." Fitz can't tell if the attempt at levity is proof of an investigation into his background or simply an attempt to get to know him in that clunky way officers sometimes do. "Look, I don't have to tell you we're vulnerable right now." He gets serious again. "Bombing raids every night. U-boats spotted off the coast. Most of or equipment left in France. There's a tremendous emphasis right now on identifying any…subversive elements."

"She was upset because there was an air raid on her home and it destroyed her family's shop and she said she felt helpless and wanted to do more and I was trying to - I don't know - help somehow," Fitz blurts out without taking a breath. He knows what the officer's words about subversive elements had been hinting at and he's eager to dispel the notion that he or Jemme are disloyal in any way. "So I thought I'd tell her how important the wireless was to my platoon in France. I told her how we couldn't retreat until it started working again and she was curious what was wrong with it and how I fixed it and we just got to talking about how it worked. And, sir, she's not – I'm not – "

The officer motions with his hand for Fitz to halt his rambling explanation, actually chuckling at how quickly the words now tumble out of him.

"Relax, private, I believe you. This is just a warning." Fitz blows out a breath he didn't know he was holding and promises not to do it again.

"Yes, let's ease back on the letter writing, shall we?"

"I'm not allowed to write her?" He makes no attempt to hide the sudden panic in his voice.

"You can continue to write her." The amusement in the officer's face is evident.

"But…" Fitz knows there is some kind of caveat.

"Maybe ask about the weather instead of divulging information about sensitive equipment." He hands the letter in his hand back to Fitz. Fitz can see entire sections he had written are blacked out.

"Right." He quickly folds it up and shoves it in his pocket.

"And Private?"

"Yes, sir."

"Be careful."

"She's not a Fifth Columnist," Fitz can't keep himself from laughing at the mere thought that Jemma is secretly sympathizing with the Germans.

"I didn't mean about that." The knowing look in the young officer's eyes somehow makes Fitz feel the most uncomfortable he has this entire conversation. He dismisses Fitz before he can stammer out a protest of any kind.

Fitz waits until he's far from the Company Headquarters before he finishes Jemma's letter. She'd been talking about that silly film with the sailors and the conversation about the desires of men in uniform. He turns the pages only to read about how she'd proudly declared to her friends that she'd spent six hours in the company of a soldier headed for the front who had been, and continues to be a perfect gentleman interested in nothing more than friendship. She means it as a compliment, he knows, but the words have as deflating an effect as the ones she signs each letters with. Perhaps the lieutenant is right to be wary.

He writes more perfunctory notes. Part of it is the knowledge that his private letters are being combed over by the censors, but part of it he supposes is a bit of self-preservation. He still writes her on a regular basis, but they're remarkably impersonal. She seems to notice it and asks repeatedly if everything is okay. He simply relays that he is busy and tired, but all is well. Despite his shortened notes, she continues to unload everything on him.

Somehow, without divulging anything that she actually does, her letters are mostly about her work. He can't help but think, despite how little he knows, that her days seem strangely similar to his. There's the obvious boredom laced with fear, but it's also what she says about the people she works with. She tells him she's surrounded by debutantes who, while certainly refined, don't provide much in the way of stimulating conversation, a sentiment he understands all too well. He can talk football with his squaddies just fine, but even the other university graduates lack the intellectual curiosity and sophistication that Jemma possesses.

He is the only person, she tells him, who she truly confides in. He finds it funny. They've spent barely sixteen hours together over the course of three days, and yet the people who are strangers are the ones they live, work and sleep alongside.

I want to see you. His ink pen hovers over the page, but he can't make himself write the words.

Sometimes he is astonished that a soldier can lack so much courage.

Instead he tells her how he thinks training exercises will likely ramp up in the spring when the threat of invasion rears its head again. The days of sports and games will be replaced with division-wide exercises and a more intense training regimen will begin. His privilege leave will probably not be approved in a few months and he ought to use it now. Whenever she does, he knows she goes back to Sheffield to see her mum and dad. Out of necessity, her father has taken a job in the steelworks, which seems to break her heart. She worries about him working in such a physically demanding position at his age. Fitz doesn't know how to propose she spend her valuable time and money to come and visit him.

So they write about the war in the Western Desert and muse about whether Fitz will depart for the Balkans or the shores of Africa. Then in March Glasgow is bombed. Despite the fact that they are ordered to stand down, the whole battalion nearly deserts. Fitz is one of the few who listens and remains in Comrie. He spends three horrific days waiting to hear news from his mum. He writes to Jemma only to keep his mind occupied, but he's unable to keep up his defenses. He tells her everything she probably never wanted to know about his mum, how she's his entire family, how she'd essentially raised him alone, and every job she'd ever worked. He even writes about the turbulent relationship with his dad, who is neither a husband nor a father, while he waits to hear news they can finally go to Glasgow.

The destruction is shocking. The naval, shipbuilding and munitions plants may have been the targets, but the collapsed shells of buildings he sees all look like tenements. Dunbarton Road has been reduced to rubble. It looks worse than towns he'd seen in France. The roads are still blocked with debris, made perilous by falling masonry and likely unexploded ordnance.

His mum is, of course, as fearless as ever, assuring him she'd been fine. They'd targeted Clydebank and the docks mostly she says, but he can see a giant crater in the Great Western Rd and evidence all around that hell has come to Glasgow. He's relieved to see she's not lying about their home. It remains untouched. She's taped the windows from corner to corner to prevent shards of glass from flying in and, while Fitz is impressed, he insists they can do better.

He applies a combination of cheese-cloth and washing-soda he assures will work better than sellotape. She asks after Jemma while she boils water on the cooker for the treatments before she asks about anything else up in Comrie with his unit

"She's fine," he admits. His mum had kept her queries about Jemma to a minimum at Christmas, mostly because the twelve-hour visit had been so brief. She'd inquired after the woman who had begun making appearances in her son's letters though and was as incredulous then as she is now that they're merely friend.

"You still courting her?"

"I'm not courting her, mum," he grumbles much like he had in December.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Is she sure?" she continues to badger.

"Mum!" he complains like a child. She just laughs at his adamant refusal, but Fitz bristles at the sound. It reminds him too much of the young lieutenant's series of questions and words of warning.

"You know Buckinghamshire is an easy train ride from here. You could be there by morning," she maintains, ignoring his grumbling yet again. She'd always been this way. Doggedly persistent and always trying to make his life better, even if it was at her own expense. He supposes that's where he gets it from, this stubborn refusal to stop whatever this is with Jemma. His squaddies know he spends his time writing to a woman. They know only a quarter of the letters he gets at mail call come from his mum. They all either accuse him of lying about the nature of his relationship with Jemma or call him a stupid sod for wasting his time. But he feels at this point like he couldn't stop himself from writing her if he tried. She makes his life better. It's evident even to his mum.

He speaks freely then, in a rare moment of candor, telling his mum how he'd gotten in trouble for writing Jemma about the wireless. She scolds him for doing something so foolish, especially when he recounts the details of his subsequent conversation with the company executive officer. Fitz tells her what he's long suspected then. That she's not a spy or a Fifth Columnist, but he's sure she does something beyond work in a wireless factory. His mum inquires what makes him think something like that.

"Because she's brilliant, mum. She's absolutely brilliant and there's no way she's just a clerk."

"There's lots of people doing jobs a bit beneath them to serve the war," she says pointedly and he knows she's talking about him. He still remembers how desperately she'd pleaded with him not to join, how even his argument that it was only the Territorials hadn't helped. He'd hated disappointing his mum, but thinks deep down she'd known that joining the Highlanders was something he'd had to do, as much for himself as anything. His father's disapproval had somehow only made it easier.

He leaves for a few hours while she gathers up her ration cards to prepare supper, walking around his city, studying all the damage his mum hadn't told him about. He visits his old primary school now being used as an ARP station and auxiliary fire service and goes to the West End to see the university where he used to work, whose windows have been blown out.

Back in Comrie, his brief time in France had begun to feel like a distant memory. Despite the news about nightly raids elsewhere in Scotland, they hadn't seen so much as a reconnaissance plane. He can't tell if it's a good thing that he had been starting to forget the terrifying scream and siren of the Stuka bombers. Being in Glasgow and seeing the huge craters and destruction is a stark reminder how quickly terror can reign down from above.

Having surveyed the damage of the city, and seeing firsthand that Germans had targeted much more than the shipyards, he refuses to return to Perthshire until he's sure his mum is adequately prepared for the next raid. He spends the next day building a shelter in the small garden for her and the neighbors with corrugated steel panels. Despite her protestations that she will be fine using the communal shelter down the street, Fitz stays until he is satisfied with his finished product, going so far as to include a drainage sump to prevent the buildup of rainwater. His skill designing the shelter doesn't surprise her, but she is impressed at how quickly he digs th rectangle. When he quips that digging is, so far, the one thing at which the army has made him proficient, she just wipes a smudge of dirt off his face and tells him how proud she is of him.

She does the same the next morning on the train platform, hugging him tightly and muttering that she doesn't know what she'd do without him. He echoes the same. Neither speak of his father.

It's difficult saying goodbye, having seen firsthand the damage the Luftwaffe has caused. If his mum is frightened she certainly doesn't show it. Still he assures her he'll come visit again soon. She just orders him to save his leave days to go and see Jemma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I could I'd spend every day working on this story. I have it planned out through '45 and I've done a ridiculous amount of research (1st Batallion really was stationed in Perthshire!), but have such a hard time finding the time to write. Updates will continue to be slow, but hopefully at a better rate than 1 every 2 months.


End file.
